


A Balancing Act

by asingularblueberry



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst and Feels, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Character Death, Fic Exchange, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Prompt Fic, Strangers to Lovers, author cant write angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-05 04:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16361222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asingularblueberry/pseuds/asingularblueberry
Summary: Lance likes balance. Keith likes Lance. When their paths cross in a dusty room, will they ever be the same?





	A Balancing Act

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the Klance Poetry Exchange. Here it is, canontranslance!

The day was young, soft, and sweet. For Lance that meant good things were ahead. His usual mornings were clustered and chaotic, but something had changed in the best way possible- the poetry club. School was never that exciting. He always had too much work and not enough time to complete it. He had too many friends and no one to talk to. A walking imbalance. He lacked the balance he so desperately craved in life until he crossed that threshold where everything evened out.

See, the thing was that Lance liked balance.

Divorced parents with imbalanced custody, having to constantly keep a to-go bag in the back of his closet. He was never very good with it at first, especially since his parents divorcing the middle of his 6th grade year, the midpoint in school, leaving him split between words. Since then, his quest for that perfect balance had overwhelmed his life.

Where he found balance was in the poetry club- a small, dusty room in the back of a long-forgotten hallway. The floorboards creaked with every step, pieces of half-broken desks lay scattered around, and the piles of musty newspaper in the corner that made the room wreak, all felt like home to him, by now. The room may not have be the most well balanced, but it was the contents that struck Lance’s fancy. Poetry books lined the shelves on the walls like a colony.

People were unpredictable and out of balance. Poetry was not. Poetry was symmetrical and planned with a clear pattern. Their lines were neat and clean, and above all else- balanced. They had a nice rhythm that could be figured out easily. _ If only people were more like poems,  _ Lance liked to think,  _ maybe I wouldn’t be such a mess. _

Shel Silverstein had always been Keith’s favorite. His father rarely had the time to read him bedtime stories like other children his age, but when he did manage to put down his work for a few precious moments, it was to read him a poem from the big, leather-bound anthology of poems that sat on his shelf.

When he transferred to Naxela Prep, he thought all of that would change. His history of delinquency had lead him to this point. “New school, new Keith”, in theory _. _ After having moved from foster house to foster house, never in one place for too long, Keith never would have thought that he’d be sitting peacefully in dusty, old classroom, a book in front of him, flipping through the pages that he’d once known all too well.

It had been years since he’d seen the anthology of poems. His book, and the memories of happiness encased in leather-bound poetry, had burned away in the fire that took his father. It wasn’t the same book, but the way his fingers ran against the rough paper fibers as he turned the pages of poetry made him smile.

Keith’s attention was stolen away, along with his heart, when the door opened. Light flooded in, silhouetting the figure of a slim, tan boy, with his chestnut hair pulled into tight curls along the sides of his face. The boy sauntered in, seemingly cutting through the dust in the air with nothing more than his mere presence. He crossed the room towards the blinds and drew them up. More light filled the room. The boy focused his attention on Keith. His blue eyes immediately pierced through the tough-boy demeanor that he so often put up. Keith grinned awkwardly.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he responded. “I’m Lance.”

The first time Lance saw Keith, it was in the poetry room. How he got there, he had no idea. The room was in most remote place he could think of- an abandoned room in an abandoned wing. In no way, shape for form, could it be just pure luck.

Regardless of what logic would dictate, it was luck. Apparently, this random raven-haired stranger had managed to wander into the room and right into his heart.

Two people in the room meant that everything was just a bit more balanced. Usually he sat in the middle of the room, so that ideally, it would be just right. But with two people, that wasn’t needed. Two meant that the curse was broken- he was free to explore. Granted, it was a self-imposed curse more than anything else, but to be free to move about the room without offsetting the balance of life was a relief. The boy got up.

“I’m so sorry, I was just- I’ll just be going now-” he stammered.

“No, wait,” Lance smiled warmly, “Stay! It can get kinda lonely in here sometimes.”

The boy hesitantly slid his bag off his shoulder, letting it rest in his hand for a moment. Lance nodded at him. He dropped it on the ground beside his chair.

Lance extended his hand. “Let’s try this again. I’m Lance.”

“Kfff,” he responded quietly, burrowing his head into his arms. The words were too muffled for Lance to make out.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that-”

He tilted his head up, letting his indigo eyes meet Lance’s blue ones, like the skies of night and day. “My name is Keith,” he said firmly. 

Keith went on to explain that he was merely looking for a place to be alone when he stumbled upon the room. Lance told him about the books, the curse, and his love for poetry. They sat together until the club bell rang. 

One by one, people began filing into the room with them, filling up the remaining empty seats. They pulled the desks into neat groups, leaving Keith and Lance isolated in their own little world. The pair watched, as if the people in front of them were figurines in a snowglobe- pretty, but of little significance to either of them. Something about the room just slowed down time. The doors opened and shut, each time bringing in new faces to Keith, but he could only focus on Lance.

The club leader stood at the front of the room and began calling for everyone’s attention. Keith whipped his head around, his hair whipping against Lance’s face, causing him to blush tremendously. Lance shook his head quietly and motioned for him to pay attention.

“Good to see all of you. I see everyone has found a group- Except you, Lance,” the upperclassman sighed. He flicked his long, white hair around his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. “Why don’t you and your friend join in over there?”

“I think I’m fine right here, Lotor,” Lance replied confidently. The older boy narrowed his eyes, but carried on with his instruction. Keith reached over from his chair and squeezed Lance’s hand.

“For the festival next month, we’ve been asked to do a poetry reading. Now, of course I don’t expect all of you to write your own, and it wouldn’t be fair to ‘assign’ such a task in the first place, so I’ve picked out some poems for us to read,” he paused for a moment to scan the room. 

Lance looked around as well, noticing only Keith’s blank expression amidst the apparent excitement in the room. His arch-enemy, Lotor picked up moments later.

“We’ll be selecting poems randomly. So if you could pass this hat around...” he said, pulling a patterned top hat from behind him and passing it to the group in front of him, “Just take one, pass it along. You’ll have of the time we have for meetings, of course, but I don’t want us to look like idiots. Be off-book by- oh, Keith, do you know what off-book means? I know it might all be a little new to you, and it may go over your head at firs-”

“I know what off-book means,” Keith glared, “I’m a theatre kid.”

“Well since you just know  _ so much _ ,” Lotor fired back sarcastically, “go on! Enlighten us with your knowledge, oh wise one.”

“It just means memorized. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out, but I would figure that someone of your intellect may have had some struggle with it.”

Lotor sneered maliciously at him before resigning. Keith turned to face Lance, a smug grin firmly planted on his lips. Lance swooned in his mind.  _ God, I want to kiss him. _

The hat finally reached Keith and Lance. Lance eagerly shoved his hand into it, rummaging around in the pieces of folded paper. Seconds later, his hand emerged with a small slip. Keith looked on from behind him as Lance gleefully unfolded it, only to watch as his face crumpled in dismay.

Lance let out a small “oh” before slumping back into his chair. He stared at the paper, letting the realization wash over him.  _ I carry your heart with me- e.e. cummings. _

_ Shit. _

Keith noticed Lance’s change in posture. “Is there a problem?” he asked quietly, examining the paper. “...Do you want me to go?”

“No! No! Not at all- it’s this poem!” Lance rushed.

“What about it?”

“I  _ hate _ it!”

“Well… what’s wrong with it?”

“There’s no balance!” Lance said, rushing towards one of the shelves of poetry books. He briefly scanned the titles before pulling one out and flipping through it wildly. He scampered back to Keith’s side and pointed at the page.

“I mean, it’s a style choice.”

“Well I don’t-”

“I like it!” Keith grinned, turning to him. Lance paused to look at his new friend’s beaming smile. He didn’t think it was possible for anyone to smile that big. He shrugged off his doubts.

“Fineeee- we’ll do it,” Lance said defeatedly, letting a small smile spread across his face as well.

The final bell for the afternoon rang a few seconds later. With a flip of the book’s cover, Lance replaced it on the shelf. Keith turned to face him, a dream-like, goofy grin across his face. They stared at each other for a shared moment before Keith pulled away

“I should get going. My mom and uh… my brother… uh...” Keith stammered, abstractly gesturing towards the door.

“Oh, uh… Yeah, same here,” agreed Lance. 

Both stared at each other, not quite sure what to say next.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes- tomorrow! It’s a small school- we’re bound to run into each other at some point,” Lance replied confidently.

Keith blushed, “Tomorrow it is, then.”

Lance followed with his eyes as Keith pulled his bag over his thin shoulders. He stopped in the doorway to give him a small wave before leaving. Lance practically swooned. In fact, he  _ did _ actually swoon, falling into a chair and causing a slight ruckus. All eyes turned to him, but it never clicked with him. All of his attention was focused on that door, as if he was waiting for the raven-haired boy to come back. He left a few moments later, but the thought of Keith never escaped his mind.

Tomorrow came and went. Keith sat by Lance at lunch, where they read the poem together, analyzing each line with their mouths’ full of stale cafeteria french fries.

Keith was never a “share your feelings and I’ll share mine!” kind of guy, but there was something different about Lance. For whatever reason, he felt a connection to him. When he looked into his bright, sparkly blue eyes, the walls around his heart seemed to crumble and fracture just a bit, letting something seep between those cracks. It was foreign, for certain, but not unpleasant; A warm feeling, like a smooth cappuccino. 

The days went by in a similar fashion. By the end of the month, they’d almost memorized the poem. To make up for the lack of symmetry in the poem, Lance suggested that they read it line by line, each from a different person. They highlighted their copies of the poem over and over, Lance’s parts in blue, Keith’s in red.

The final line was purple.

The first day of the month, Keith was gone. Lance assumed he’d taken a different route around school, but to his dismay, he didn’t see him in the poetry room after school that day. With under a week until the festival, this was turning out to be bad news. The next day came, still no Keith.

Nasty rumors spread like wildfire. About Keith being arrested. Him being killed. Him being caught drunk and passed out by school grounds, only to be taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. All stemmed from the idea that Keith’s demeanor and past made him prone to a life of crime, drugs, or death. No, not prone, guaranteed, a life of crime, drugs, and then death.

Lance didn’t know what to do.

Three days remained before the school festival and Keith was gone. He’d vanished like a ghost, into thin air without a trace. Lance began to realize the emptiness in the poetry room where he should be. He began to sit in the middle of the room again, trying to balance everything. It felt like a constant weight on his shoulder.

It wasn’t just him that was taking notice of Keith’s absence. The rest of the club’s members showed confusion surrounding the disappearance of one of their own. They watched as Lance slowly receded inwards, losing the light that had once glowed bright in his eyes. His cheerful aura was exchanged for one of a darkened spirit, a chaotic one. 

Everywhere they looked, they saw Lance, stumbling down the hallways, the words to the poem heavy on his tongue. He was never able to speak them. Without the other half- his other half- it was too… wrong.

“I carry your heart with me,” he’d whisper on his way home from school, dragging his feet in the dirt as he walked. He expected at any minute for the next line to be said. He’d wait in dreaded anticipation, but the line never came. He began to finish the stanza on his own, but couldn’t bring himself to say more than the next line.

“I carry it in my heart.”

Two days left.

Lotor approached Lance after school. He said he’d found a lead on where Keith was. Apparently, someone had seen a teenager about their age and matching his description in a cemetery on the outskirts of town. Something in Lance ignited. A spark grew into a burning flame. It pierced through his shell of dismay and punctured his heart. He knew what he had to do.

Lance knew about Keith’s dad. Hell, half of the school did. Later that night, Lance made the trip out to that graveyard on the edge of town. He’d gotten quite lucky- their town was very small and only had two cemeteries.

Unsurprisingly, he found Keith. 

He was sitting on the ground, head buried in his hands. Fresh soil muffled the sounds of Lance’s footsteps as he approached him. Lance knelt beside him, closing his eyes and placing a hand on his shoulder. He held Keith as he sobbed, slowly pulling him closer. Lance whispered comforting words to him, tears of his own forming and dripping onto the ground beneath them. Keith turned and embraced him tightly, gripping his hands tightly around Lance’s waist. Lance reciprocated the gesture. 

The world felt balanced once again.

It took a moment before they could speak. Even then, the words were slow to form, percolating on the tip of Keith’s tongue before they dropped suddenly.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Lance,” he hissed shakily, “I’m so sorry I left you.”

Lance shook his head. “There’s nothing to apologize for. You lost your dad. No matter how long ago, it still hurts. I can’t imagine-”

He stopped mid-sentence upon seeing Keith’s reaction. The color had faded from Keith’s skin instantly, a grimace coming across his face as his eyes widened. Lance looked past his shoulder, towards the grave they were sat next to.

_ Fresh earth. _

The inscription on the headstone looked foreign. He didn’t recognize the name.  _ “Phoenix Krolia- soldier, wife, mother.” Mother. _

“Oh my god...”

“I spent months-no,  _ years _ \- looking for her,” Keith said solemnly. “She died in combat when I was two.”

“Keith...”

“Y’know,” he continued, bitterness creeping into his voice, “it’s pretty damn ironic. All this time… so many hours pouring through records… I talked to  _ everyone _ I could think of, for fuck’s sake! Do you have any idea how much that hurt?!

“My own  _ mother _ was kept a secret from me! I never even got to  _ know _ her! 

“And do you wanna know why? Do you?” he hollered. “It’s because they weren’t  _ married! _ I never got to know my mother and I never will because of a damn paper!”

Keith slammed his fists on the ground, letting his body drop into a heap of pent up frustration and sorrow. It was six stages of grief in seconds sequentially cycling over and over. Lance reached over towards him, wrapping his arms around the sobbing boy’s back. Keith heaved emptily, lurching from sitting to practically hurling himself to the ground moments later.

The sorrow filled the night air with despair. Keith’s anguished sobs and mourning rang into the hollow sky, striking through the silence of the darkness. Lance waited by his side, verbally consoling him when he could, but always at least keeping a hand on his shoulder. He waited for some sign that it was safe to take him away from the graveyard- away from the pain, the suffering, and the passionate hatred for everything he’d come to know.

He waited all night.

One day until the festival. They walked hand in hand to school the next morning. Neither had a change of clothes, but they managed to sneak into the school early to wash up. Lance claimed the shower first. Keith sat outside, waiting, reciting the poem. Occasionally Lance would fill in his line, but his voice lacked the usual depth and emotion.

“I carry your heart with me,” Lance began hollowly.

“I carry it in my heart.”

“I am never without it.”

The water valve squeaked shut as Lance turned its knob. Keith passed him a towel a second later. He stepped out of the shower to be greeted by Keith, who immediately blushed brightly.

“My turn,” he insisted, pushing past Lance. 

Lance put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. He briefly inspected the shower, scanning for anything potentially dangerous. Once it was to his satisfaction, he let him pass. Keith drew the curtain behind him, flinging his clothing over the top of the stall a moment later. The shower spurted to life once again. Keith’s voice trailed off to Lance as he left the bathroom, but he still could make out a few words.

“Anywhere I go you go, my dear...”

He emerged from the shower after a few minutes of trying futilely to scrub away some of the pain he felt, as if it was a stain coating his skin. At least he was clean. Lance was nowhere to be found. He dressed himself, quietly reciting lines from the poem. He pictured Lance, with his blue eyes, tan skin, and perfect smile, beside him, correcting any tiny mistake.

_ “The poem is already unbalanced as is!”  _ he could imagine Lance giving his classic smirk. That damn smirk always got him, melting into his heart like warm honey.  _ “It doesn’t need any help from you.” _

“Lance? You there?”

No response came, which was quite unfortunate because it meant that Keith was lost. Drying his hair a final time, he stumbled into the hallway, letting the bathroom door slam behind him. He strolled aimlessly down the halls in search of anything or anyone familiar. The words to the poem fell out of his mouth as he roamed.

Step. “I carry it in my heart.”

Step. Silence.

Step. “Anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever-”

Step. Silence.

He passed by the poetry room, hardly recognizing it anymore. Doubling back, Keith opened the door. The scent of the dust and the sight of the dilapidated desks and chairs strewn around the room induced a wave of memories. The entire month flashed before his eyes. And at the end of it- the book.

The leather bound anthology sat on a bookstand on the table. Keith rushed to it, the feelings of nostalgia washing over him. He opened the cover to find a neat handwritten note taped to the first page.  _ Meet me where the sidewalk ends.- L _

On the back of the note, a copy of their poem. Keith knew where he had to go. With every step he took, words jumbled together in his mind, coalescing into one singular, repeating thought of “ _ I carry it in my heart. _ ”

He carried it in his heart. Well, more accurately in his arms, next to his heart. He carried the book, the note, and his love to where the sidewalk ended- the courtyard at the center of the school campus that all the paths lead to. 

Lance stood in the center with his arms extended. Keith embraced him tightly, dropping the book on the ground. He’d never realized how short he was compared to Lance.

“I think I like you...” he whispered into his shoulder.

Lance pulled back from the hug. “What?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing… I-”

“No, no, none of that ‘ _ ohhhh nothing!!’  _ bullshit- What did you say, Keith?” he insisted warmly.

Keith looked down at the book, awkwardly shifting his weight between his feet.

“Keith..? You don’t actually have to tell me anyt-”

“I like you!” Keith blurted out.

His face burned hotly. He felt Lance place a hand on his cheek and tilt his head up. It was like the first time they met all over again. His indigo eyes meet Lance’s blue ones, like the skies of night and day, colliding once more.

“Can I kiss you?” Lance asked, looking deeply into his eyes.

Keith responded incomprehensibly, but nodded rapidly. Lance grinned and kissed him lightly on the lips. He tasted like… words; Complex strings and sequences of words forming like sweet stanzas of poetry. It was perfect.

No more days until the festival. They stood beside each other on the stage. As the audience settled down, they crossed to opposite sides and sat in the chairs they’d set up. Lance started.

“I carry your heart with me.”

Keith looked outwards to the audience. “I carry it in my heart.”

He stood up, continuing the poem. “ Anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever- ”

Lance joined in on those two words, standing as well. “- And whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling.

“I fear no fate.”

“For you are my fate, my sweet,” he said, turning his loving gaze to Lance.

“I want no world.”

Keith stepped closer to Lance, holding out his hand for him. “For beautiful you are my world, my true.”

“ And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.”

Lance took his hand and kissed it gently. They then stood to face fully towards the audience.

Keith pointed out into the crowd. “Here is the deepest secret nobody knows.”

“Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life-”

“-Which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.”

They turned to each other, saying the next line loftily to each other. “And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.”

Lance thought of the poetry room. He thought of his world slowly balancing out. For some reason, that didn’t seem to matter so much to him anymore. He looked at Keith, their eyes meeting. Keith squeezed his hand tightly

“I carry your heart,” they synchronized, “I carry it in my heart.”


End file.
